Institute

Founded in 1994, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin is one of the more than 80 research institutes administered by the Max Planck Society. It is dedicated to the study of the history of science and aims to understand scientific thinking and practice as historical phenomena.

People

The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science comprises scholars across all Departments and Research Groups, as well as an Administration team, IT Support, Research IT Group, and Research Coordination and Communications team.

Publications & Resources

The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) engages with the research community and broader public, and is committed to open access.

This section provides access to published research results and electronic sources in the history of science. It is also a platform for sharing ongoing research projects that develop digital tools.

Researchers at the Institute benefit from an internal library service. The Institute’s research is also made accessible to the wider public through edited Feature Stories and the Mediathek’s audio and video content.

News & Events

The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science frequently shares news, including calls for papers and career opportunities. The Media & Press section highlights press releases and the Institute's appearances in national and global media. Public events—including colloquia, seminars, and workshops—are shown on the events overview.

James Kennaway

Visiting Scholar (Feb 2017-Mar 2017)

James Kennaway is a Historian of Medicine at Groningen University, having previously worked at Oxford, Stanford, Vienna, Durham, and Newcastle Universities. His work examines the interactions between science, medicine and culture since the Enlightenment. In particular, he has written extensively on the relationship between medicine and music, notably in his monograph Bad Vibrations: The History of the Idea of Music as a Cause of Disease and in articles on musical hypnosis and brainwashing, and on gynaecological and psychiatric critiques of female musical education. He has also written about theories connecting the mind to the digestion, the idea that reading books can make you ill and on Chladni sound figures.

Projects

Selected Publications

Kennaway, J. (2016). Lebenskraft, the body and will power: the life force in German musical aesthetics. In J. McCarthy (Ed.), The early history of embodied cognition 1740-1920. The Lebenskraft-debate and radical reality in German science, music, and literature (pp. 125-143). Amsterdam: Rodopi.